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Detectives have identified human bones unearthed early last month along a U.S. 89 frontage road in Davis County. Now comes the bigger mystery: How did the Woods Cross woman die more than three decades ago?
Davis County Sheriff's Sgt. DeeAnn Servey confirmed on Thursday that the Utah Crime Lab had identified the bones, including a skull, as being those of 23-year-old Theresa Rose Greaves. The woman, a New Jersey native, had been missing since Aug. 5, 1983, when she left the Woods Cross mobile home she had been sharing with a friend for a job interview in Salt Lake City.
Greaves arrived via bus in Salt Lake City about noon, from where she called a friend. That was the last anyone had heard from her.
Douglas Anderson Lovell was questioned in connection with Greaves' disappearance in 1993. Lovell, who pleaded guilty to the 1985 slaying of 39-year-old Joyce Yost, a witness against him in a rape case, has denied any involvement with Greaves' demise.
Lovell's death sentence in the Yost killing was overturned in 2010 on a technicality. The 57-year-old Lovell is being re-tried for aggravated murder in Ogden's 2nd District Court. Opening statements in his trial are scheduled for Monday.
Still, Servey confirmed that Lovell remains a person of interest in the Greaves case, but she stressed that detectives also are looking into numerous other, unspecified leads.
"We are definitely looking at this as a homicide, until it can be ruled otherwise," Servey said, though she declined to further discuss other forensic findings due to the ongoing nature of the investigation.
So far, she added, attempts to locate Greaves' next-of-kin have been unsuccessful. Servey said those identified turned out to be deceased.
The timeline did appear to rule out executed serial killer Ted Bundy, whose homicidal spree ended five years prior to Greaves' disappearance.
Bundy confessed to having assaulted, kidnapped and murdered 30 young women and girls in seven states between 1974 and 1978. Four of his victims were from Utah; a fifth Utah girl escaped him.
Bundy was executed in Florida's electric chair in 1989.
Servey asked that anyone with information about the Greaves case call the Davis County Sheriff's Office at 801-451-4150.
Twitter: @remims